MacBook Pro not recognizing live USB - Ubuntu Mate 18.10

Support & Help Requests Hardware
#1

Recently moved my MacBook Air over to Ubuntu Mate and had absolutely no issues. Love Mate!

However, we also have a MacBook Pro that I have tried everything I can to get it to load but when booting and holding down the alt/Option key, the USB is not recognized. I only see the HDD and the Recovery disk.

The USB is fine, I have tried it on other Apple computers that I have yet to move over, the key is being recognized in the MBP Finder as “Generic Flash Drive” through Disk Utility so I know it’s not the key. I have tried both USB ports upon booting and although the key is recognized in Finder on both, it won’t show up on the boot menu.

Specs on the MBP are:
13", mid 2009
Processor: 2.53GHz, Intel Core Duo
Memory: 4GB, 1067 MHz, DDR3
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 9400M, 256MB

I am not a techie by any stretch but would appreciate any advice anyone can provide. I have read about rEFInd but not really sure what that is or how to get it installed.

The community has been terrific to view over and look forward to you coming through for me again!

Thanks in advance.

#2

My main home computer is almost the same (mine’s the late 2008 aluminum MacBook, so same specs but removable battery and no FW port). A long time ago I had to use rEFInd to get it to load Ubuntu flash drives, but not for 3 or 4 years. Now they show normally in the boot menu.

How are you creating the flash drive? I find that using dd in the terminal (Mac or Linux) works best, or using Gnome Disks in Ubuntu.

Also, when I’ve successfully created a bootable Linux drive, it will not show up in Finder. When I insert it, I’ll get a message offering to reformat it, and Disk Utility will see it. (Fedora is different.) But maybe you mean the drive shows up when it is formatted differently.

#3

Thanks for the reply elcste.

Downloaded .iso from this site (Ubuntu Mate, 64bit, 18.10 Cosmic), used etcher to flash the USB drive and write.

As for your comment about Finder, just tried it again this way. Booted up MBP and inserted the USB. Finder does not recognize it, you are correct and I get the “disk you inserted was not readble by this computer” and the usual 3 choices: initialize, ignore or eject. In this case I hit Ignore to see if it shows up in Disk Utility, which it does.

Mount is not available for this media.

So…sorry for the miscommunication from my end. Not sure what to do on next steps to get the MBP to recognize it and be able to boot from it. Sure would be nice to re-purpose this computer!

Any other advice?

Thanks in advance for the assistance.

#4

Hmm, that sounds like it should be working, so I’m not really sure.

What MacOS version is this computer running? Newer MacOS version include firmware updates, so if it hasn’t had the OS upgraded to a new version the firmware might be older.

You could try writing the flash drive with dd in the terminal in MacOS. You need to find out the disk ID of the flash drive, either in Disk Utility > Get Info or with the diskutil list command. Usually the boot hard drive is disk0, so if you don’t have other disks attached it would be disk1, but it can vary. The disk needs to be unmounted, which it will be if the Finder doens’t recognize it (choose “Ignore” if you get the pop up). Then the command is

sudo dd if=PATH/TO/UBUNTU/ISO of=/dev/rdisk1 bs=4m

This is assuming your flash drive is disk1. Using rdiskn is faster than without the r for some reason. The bs=4m part tells it to using 4 MB blocks.

Lastly, you could try rEFInd. The documentation for it is dense, but thorough. Just do everything step by step. Worst case you will need to fully erase the disk and start over, so make sure everything is backed up!

#5

Again, thanks for the reply.

OSX El Capitan 10.11.6, Furthest I can go with updates for OSX. Could not update to High Sierra and definitely cannot go with Mojave.

Now for my lack of knowledge.

  1. dd is what exactly? Is that a program that read, copies and writes as per Wikipedia? Assume so.

  2. The command line you gave me. If I understand this correctly, we are -RE-WRITING Ubuntu Mate onto the flash drive using this command? If so, do I then try to boot after that is completed using the hold the option key down again or will this command automatically set up a boot sequence? The flash drive shows up as Device: disk1 in Disk Utility.

  3. Finally, I am prepared to use rEFInd if need be and yes would got step by step. When you say erase the disk and start over, I assume you mean erase the HDD and remove OSX completely. I am prepared to do that if need be but truly don’t understand how the computer would boot at all so my assumption (lots of assumptions:confounded:) is that rEFInd generates the boot loader for a blank disk?

I really do appreciate your assistance on this and hopefully we can get this to work. I know of a friend who has an older MBP he would like me to assist to re-purpose so (another assumption), there is likely many out there as well.

Await your reply.

#6

Busy at work today, but I’ll try to elaborate at some point this weekend.

#7

Correct, I was suggesting to use the command-line tool dd to try rewriting the flash drive. Linux ISOs are complex, with a number of partitions to support booting from BIOS, UEFI and Apple EFI, and dd is the best tool to make sure the ISO is copied exactly.

Once it’s copied, you would just try to boot from it the same as before.

MacOS stores its EFI boot files on the system partition (unlike PC UEFI, which is on a separate partition), so rEFInd modifies the Mac partition if you store it there. It shouldn’t cause any problems, but if it does you would likely need to erase and reinstall MacOS and then start over.

#8

Thanks.

I will try writing from dd onto another USB that I have to keep it clean and simple. Will also download the latest .iso before writing to the disk.

Will advise in next day or so…thanks again for the advice.

#9

Ok…stuck. Realize I am still in learning mode so ask for patience. Thanks in advance.

The command line you provided, I would need to provide the path to the file, correct?

You provided: ```
sudo dd if=PATH/TO/UBUNTU/ISO of=/dev/rdisk1 bs=4m

So, should I include the path to my downloads folder after the "=" sign?  How should that actually look.

I have tried to get the path through Get Info on the .iso and so copied this:
SSD>Users>Tom>Downloads>ubuntu-mate-18.10-desktop-amd64.iso

I get an error message that that this is a directory which I understand but cannot get past.

The actual command line I assume has to come from that location but for the life of me I cannot get it.

Help!
#10

Yes, either relative or full path, so either

sudo dd if=Downloads/ubuntu-mate-18.10-desktop-amd64.iso

OR

sudo dd if=/Users/USERNAME/Downloads/ubuntu-mate-18.10-desktop-amd64.iso

You also need to make sure to use the right disk ID for flash drive. You can use Disk Utility’s “Get Info” function. It will say something like “disk1” or “disk2”. In the example, I’m assuming disk1.

#11

Appreciate the reply. Looks like I was just adding too much info.

It’s disk

#12

Sorry…it’s disk 1 for sure.

Will keep you posted on success…hopefully!

#13

elcste,

OK…this is being sent to you from the MBP you have been working with on!

However, my last chance effort on my own was to go old school…I actually ripped a DVD and installed from there! Broadcom driver needed to be loaded for the wifi to work but things seem to be working fine…so far!

Appreciate the help you provided, a great example of the community.

To all reading this, full props to elcste for the assistance and great advice!

1 Like